Prudential Earns DALBAR Awards 2008

Prudential Earns DALBAR Awards
Prudential’s Retirement and Annuities Businesses Rate Among Industry’s Best for Customer Service and Communications

21 Feb 2008

NEWARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Prudential Financial’s ability to deliver industry-leading service and participant communications to clients across the United States has earned its retirement and annuities businesses several Service and Communications Awards from DALBAR, Inc., the nation’s leading financial services market research and consulting firm. Both Prudential Retirement and Prudential Annuities are businesses of Prudential Financial Inc. (NYSE: PRU).

For the seventh time, Prudential Annuities earned the DALBAR Service Award for excellence in customer service; a distinction awarded to financial services industry leaders committed to delivering the highest tier of service to their customers. In addition, both Prudential Annuities and Prudential Retirement earned DALBAR’s Communication Seal of Excellence, awarded to communications in financial services that excel in meeting the needs of consumers.

Prudential Retirement’s Total Retirement Statement (TRS) and Defined Benefit statement (DB) earned the honor for the third consecutive year. DALBAR’s 2007 Trends and Best Practices report also ranked Prudential’s DB statement #1 for the fourth consecutive time for “exemplifying the ideal order of presentation and providing the plan sponsor with prime space to alert participants to urgent announcements and information.” 2008 marked the first time that Prudential Annuities received the award for its customer communications.

“This marks the fourth time DALBAR has recognized Prudential Retirement as an industry service leader focused on delivering accessible, engaging statements that provide participants with a quick snapshot of all of their employer-sponsored sources of retirement income,” said John Kuczik, vice president, Client Experience at Prudential Retirement. “We believe that presenting meaningful information in a clear, understandable format leads to informed decision-making and helps participants build a more secure retirement.”

“These awards are a great litmus test of how well we’re doing with our customers,” said Steven Marenakos, vice president, Operations and Systems, Prudential Annuities. “The DALBAR Award is an industry stamp of approval of the post-sale experience that we pride ourselves on providing to our customers both through our communications and call center support.”

Throughout the year, DALBAR conducts systematic testing of customer service to measure how financial companies respond to the needs for service for their customers. Companies that exceed a variety of industry benchmarks after one year of testing earn the annual DALBAR Service Award.

“These awards recognize Prudential as head and shoulders above their competition in the critical areas of supporting participants and clients,” said Kathleen Whalen, Managing Director at DALBAR, Inc.

DALBAR, Inc. is committed to raising the standards of excellence in the financial services industry. With offices in both the US and Canada, DALBAR develops standards for, and provides research, ratings and rankings of intangible factors to the mutual fund, broker/dealer, life insurance, property and casualty, and managed account industries. They include investor behavior, customer satisfaction, service quality, communications, Internet services, and financial professional ratings.

Prudential Retirement delivers retirement plan solutions for public, private, and non-profit organizations. Services include state-of-the-art record keeping, administrative services, investment management, comprehensive employee investment education and communications, and trustee services. With nearly 85 years of retirement experience, Prudential Retirement helps meet the needs of nearly 3.4 million participants and annuitants. Prudential Retirement has $164 billion in retirement account values as of December 31, 2007.

Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU), a financial services leader with approximately $648 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2007, has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Leveraging its heritage of life insurance and asset management expertise, Prudential is focused on helping individual and institutional customers grow and protect their wealth. The company’s well-known Rock symbol is an icon of strength, stability, expertise and innovation that has stood the test of time. Prudential's businesses offer a variety of products and services, including life insurance, annuities, retirement-related services, mutual funds, investment management, and real estate services.

Contacts
Prudential
Dawn Kelly, 973-802-7134
Cell: 201-406-7248
dawn.kelly@prudential.com